Overview

Pact is a non-profit organization whose mission is to serve adopted children of color. In order to best serve children's needs, we provide not only adoption placement services as a licensed adoption agency, but also lifelong education, support, and community for adoptees and their parents on issues of adoption and race.

Consultation

Consultations are available for families considering adoption, as well as those who are already adoptive and/or foster parents and looking for guidance or education about specific issues. Pact can help you decide whether or not adopting is the right choice for you. If you become a Pact client, Pact will be available to you throughout the placement process and after you bring your child home. Whether or not you adopt through Pact, we offer parental coaching at all ages and stages, helping you navigate the issues that come up as your child develops. Both before and after placement, Pact has staff members dedicated to serving same-race adoptive parents of color, and their parenting partners, as well as transracial and transnational adoptive parents (parenting across racial lines).

Placement

Pact is a licensed adoption agency that helps pre-adoptive parents who want to adopt African American, Latino, Asian and multiracial children born anywhere in the United States. Pact actively recruits families of color, who are historically under-served in the world of adoption. Ninety-eight percent of our placements involve at least one adoptive parent who shares the racial or ethnic heritage of the child they adopt. When we work with parents who want to adopt across racial lines, they are required to complete an educational process that provides a strong grounding in the way race and adoption intersect in transracial families before we proceed towards placement. Our placement services are offered on a steep sliding scale based on income, so that no qualified low- or middle-income families are barred from adopting due to prohibitive costs. All of our services are free to expectant/birth parents.

If you reside in the state of NY please email consult@pactadopt.org for more information about how Pact can support your adoption journey.

Home Study Services

As part of our placement services, we provide home studies to families who reside in California where Pact is licensed. If a family resides in a county or state where Pact is not licensed, they will be required to obtain a home study and complete post-placement supervision with a licensed agency in their locale.

Education

Many organizations offer pre- and post-adoption trainings, but few, if any, delve as comprehensively as Pact into the intersections of adoption and race. In a supportive yet challenging way, we ask that prospective parents wrestle with questions of racial identity, racism as it applies to both children and adults, and for white families considering or currently in a transracial adoption, we address white privilege and its impact on communities of color. And as any parent can tell you, the need to learn and grow lasts over the lifespan of your child and family. That's why Pact offers ongoing workshops on dealing with schools, talking to your children about adoption, the role of birth parents in the lives of adopted children, and always, race. The "jewel in the crown" of our education programs is our annual Pact Family Camp (offered on both the West and East Coast). Every summer this unique gathering provides adopted children of color and their families from all over the country a safe place where they can explore their feelings about adoption and race, build community, and alleviate the feelings of isolation many of them feel the rest of the year.

Support

Creating safe spaces to have difficult conversations is critical to the youth and parents we serve. We offer online and peer-to-peer opportunities for parents to connect with one another to support growth and learning. We have special affinity groups for adoptive parents of color, LGBTQ parents, adult adoptees of color, first/birth parents, single parents, and parents of teens, as well as a Teen Club. We also support a number of regional groups.

Community

Pact works not only to create community for adopted people and adoptive families, but to educate the community at large about issues related to adoption and race. In addition to speaking at conferences for adoptive parents and/or adoption professionals, Pact Director Beth Hall and other experts on the Pact staff are available to speak to and work with educators and school staffs, as well as churches, community groups, and clubs. Pact has developed an adoption curriculum for teachers and other education professionals, as well as "Adoption, It's Complicated," a specialized training for professionals in clinics, hospitals, or counseling practices who interact with expectant parents facing unplanned pregnancies.